Music columnist's novel springs from his personal story with anorexia

By Chris Bergeron, Daily News Correspondent

Sunday

Jun 17, 2018 at 1:30 AM

An award-winning music critic for the MetroWest Daily News, Boston TAB, Boston Globe, Billboard and other publications, Ken Capobianco immersed himself for more than two decades in rock culture where an obsession with body image drove him to starve himself to 69 pounds until a massive stroke nearly killed him.

From the “Glory Days’’ of Bruce Springsteen to the rise of hip-hop, Ken Capobianco covered Boston’s music scene with insight and passion even as anorexia gnawed at his health.

An award-winning music critic for the MetroWest Daily News, Boston TAB, Boston Globe, Billboard and other publications, he immersed himself for more than two decades in rock culture where an obsession with body image drove him to starve himself to 69 pounds until a massive stroke nearly killed him.

Capobianco has poured the soaring highs of a music writer’s life and the painful lows of his near-fatal eating disorder into his first novel, “Call Me Anorexic: The Ballard of a Thin Man,” a powerful exploration of illness and recovery.

Now living in Long Beach, California, he said he had been “through hell” during his 29-year battle with anorexia and wanted to write an “honest novel” to help others dealing with similar issues.

Transforming his own struggle into a frank portrayal of a man battling his own demons, Capobianco has achieved his goal of “telling a story about male anorexia that nobody has told.”

“The idea that a man would have anorexia runs counter to our cultural perception of masculinity,” he said. “I wanted to capture the mindset of a male anorexic while taking on a larger story of love and life.”

Capobianco has succeeded by writing a singular novel of considerable psychological perception that explores city life with irreverent wit.

Unfolding over nine months leading up to December 2001, the 408-page novel probes the conflicted drives of a young anorexic named Michael coping with heartbreak and personal demons that threaten his dreams.

Writing an accessible, unpretentious prose, Capobianco portrays Michael as a multifaceted character most readers will recognize.

After his live-in girlfriend moves in with his best pal and his life spirals into chaos, Michael tries to understand how his need for control has left him in the grips of a dangerous obsession.

While chronicling the lives and loves of young Bostonians, Capobianco portrays Michael as a complex man struggling to unearth the roots of his unhealthy fixations on body image, food and the buried family traumas that might explain them.

After earning a master’s degree from Tufts University, Capobianco taught English at Northeastern University for several years before switching his passion for literature to writing about pop music.

He now believes the twin environments of rock music and journalism exacerbated his own inclinations to excessive control and the drive for perfection in his writing that fueled his anorexia.

“I fit into rock ’n’ roll culture. The ideal body was really thin. I was so skinny people thought I was on drugs but I never used them,” he said.

And, he joked, “At that time, skinny guys got all the girls.”

Throughout those years, Capobianco’s weight hovered between 80 and 100 pounds.

“The isolation of being a writer was a contributing factor. You do everything in private,” he said. “And you’re always striving for perfection. I didn’t eat with anyone for 30 years. Women never lasted more than two dates because you’d have to eat with them.”

Capobianco had been treated for his eating disorder at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Brighton from the late 1980s to early 2000s but never fully committed to the therapy that, after leaving Boston, eventually changed his life.

“I’d been diagnosed when I was 21 but no one knew how to treat a man,” he said. “All the therapies were geared toward women.”

Looking back, he said his 2008 move to the West Coast put him “on the path to recovery” by limiting his time in clubs where fashionably thin musicians performed, and eventually “committing not to repeat the same patterns and mistakes.”

“All the therapy I’d been through and often resisted began to kick in. I yielded and incorporated some of the things I’d learned into my life. As the novel makes clear, you can’t do it on your own. Therapy is crucial,” he said.

After a decade in California, the 58-year-old Capobianco now weighs 145 and is married to a woman from Thailand who is a world-class chef.

“Anorexia doesn’t discriminate. It could affect anybody,” he said. “I wanted to create an intimate voice in the novel that people could relate to. And I wanted to convey the damage it does to family and friends.”

Planning a second novel, Capobianco said, “Everyone has their own story that they need to unravel.”

In “Call Me Anorexic,” he has shared his own unraveling with humor and courage.